Nazim al-Kudsi

Nazim al-Kudsi (14 February 1906-6 February 1998) was Prime Minister of Syria from 24 to 27 September 1949 (succeeding Hashim al-Atassi and preceding Khalid al-Azm) and from 4 June 1950 to 27 March 1951 (interrupting al-Azm's terms) and President of Syria from 12 December 1961 to 7 March 1963 (succeeding Gamal Abdel Nasser and preceding Luay al-Atassi). He was overthrown by Amin al-Hafiz and the Ba'ath Party in the 1963 Syrian coup d'etat.

Biography
Nazim al-Kudsi was born in Aleppo, Aleppo Governorate, Syria on 14 February 1906, and he became a lawyer before becoming involved in the nationalist National Bloc of Syria during the 1930s. In 1939, he resigned from the Bloc after it failed to prevent the annexation of Alexandretta by Turkey, and, in 1945, upon Syrian independence, he was named Ambassador to the United States, serving until 1947. He briefly served as Prime Minister in 1949 after Husni al-Za'im ousted Shukri al-Kuwatli's government from power in a coup, but al-Kudsi refused to form a government, seeing al-Za'im's regime as illegitimate. He went on to serve as Prime Minister from 1950 to 1951, but Adib al-Shishakli overthrew the government in a coup and arrested the entire leadership of al-Kudsi's People's Party. From 1954 to 1957, he served as Speaker of the Parliament of Syria, and he retired from public life in 1958 after the foundation of the United Arab Republic.

Presidency
On 28 September 1961, after the 1961 Syrian coup d'etat ended the UAR, Kudsi was elected President of Syria, and he worked to restore Syria's relations with the anti-Nasserist governments of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon and to befriend the United States and the United Kingdom. al-Kudsi restored factories which Gamal Abdel Nasser had nationalized, and he restored the outlawed political parties of the country. However, he attempted to decrease the military's power in Syrian politics, leading to a failed 1962 coup. On 8 March 1963, the Ba'ath Party's supporters in the military, led by Amin al-Hafiz, launched the 1963 Syrian coup d'etat, and Kudsi was forced to resign at gunpoint. He went into exile in Jordan, where he died in 1998.